Always reflective of the latest research and thinking in the field, Patricia Miller’s acclaimed text offers an ideal way to help students understand and distinguish the major theoretical schools of child development. This fully updated new edition includes a new focus on biological theories of development, and offers new instructor resource materials.
Child Development: Theories and Critical Perspectives provides an engaging and perceptive overview of both well-established and recent theories in child and adolescent psychology. This unique summary of traditional scientific perspectives alongside critical post-modern thinking will provide readers with a sense of the historical development of different schools of thought. The authors also place theories of child development in philosophical and cultural contexts, explore links between them, and consider the implications of theory for practice in the light of the latest thinking and developments in implementation and translational science. Early chapters cover mainstream theories such as those of Piaget, Skinner, Freud, Maccoby and Vygotsky, whilst later chapters present interesting lesser-known theorists such as Sergei Rubinstein, and more recent influential theorists such as Esther Thelen. The book also addresses lifespan perspectives and systems theory, and describes the latest thinking in areas ranging from evolutionary theory and epigenetics, to feminism, the voice of the child and Indigenous theories. The new edition of Child Development has been extensively revised to include considerable recent advances in the field. As with the previous edition, the book has been written with the student in mind, and includes a number of useful pedagogical features including further reading, discussion questions, activities, and websites of interest. Child Development: Theories and Critical Perspectives will be essential reading for students on advanced courses in developmental psychology, education, social work and social policy, and the lucid style will also make it accessible to readers with little or no background in psychology.
The result of extensive scholarship and consultation with leading scholars, this text introduces students to twenty-four theorists and compares and contrasts their theories on how we develop as individuals. Emphasizing the theories that build upon the developmental tradition established by Rousseau, this text also covers theories in the environmental/learning tradition.
Life-Span Development Psychology: Research and Theory covers the issues and problems associated with a life-span conceptualization of developmental psychology. The book discusses the status,issues, and antecedents of life-span developmental psychology; an approach to theory construction in the psychology of development and aging; and models and theories of development. The text also describes the methodology and research strategy in the study of developmental change; the application of multivariate strategies to problems of measuring and structuring long-term change; and the mechanisms required for the operation of perception and recognition. Learning and retention; language; and intellectual abilities are also considered. Developmental psychologists will find the study invaluable.
`This is a beautifully written account of the most important ways in which developmental psychologists go about their business, illustrated with carefully chosen articles which are carefully described in order to make the designs, methodologies, analysis and interpretation of the results readily accessible to a non-expert readership. This will become the preferred textbook for those who want an up-to-date, interesting and accessible introduction to developmental psychology research′ - Alan Slater, University of Exeter A wide range of techniques is used to investigate children′s development. This book, which is aimed at advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students in psychology and related areas, provides a guide to key theories and methods used by researchers. Carefully chosen articles are accompanied by a commentary from the author that, among other things, helps students to understand the rationale for a study, the choice of design and assessment measures, use of statistics and the interpretation of results. A wide range of recent research papers is included to cover observational and experimental methods from infancy to adolescence. The research papers are introduced by two chapters that consider the relationship between theory and methods, explaining how models of development differ from one another and how they can be tested through experimental studies.
Something instructive occurred in the process of entitling the present collection. Both editor and publisher sought a simple and succinct rubric for the various pieces of work. But they rapidly and reluctantly reached the consensus that, by either intellectual or marketing criteria, the inser tion of the adjective "psychological" to qualify the noun "development" was a communicative necessity. Much to the chagrin of the develop mental psychologist, the term development still connotes-to the world at large as well as the general community of publishers, librarians, and computer archivists-the modernization of nation states. Inside and outside the university, I find that, when asked, "What are you in terested in?" I am not at liberty to reply, "The concept of development," without being absorbed immediately into a discussion of Third World studies. The approach of the present volume should be taken as an exhortation to psychologists to take the genealogy of "development'' seriously. The history of the discipline is not so different from the histo ry of the word and, as we shall discover, the concern with developmen tal progress cannot easily be separated from the urge for dominion. This volume presents a selection from the recent critical scholarship on psychological development. The emphasis is on rethinking the field of developmental psychology at the level of theory.
"[T]he best and most useful social science text I have read in a decadeÖ.It is comprehensive in its research and scope, clearly written and uses excellent case studies and examples to illustrate in simple terms what might otherwise be complex phenomena." --Dr. Tom Altobelli Federal Magistrate, Family Law Courts Sydney, Australia The goal of every family law professional and mental health practitioner is to improve family court outcomes in the best interests of the child. This book will assist readers in meeting this critical goal. Developmental Psychology for Family Law Professionals serves as a practical application of developmental theory to the practice of family law. This book helps family law and mental health professionals gain a broader understanding of each child's unique needs when in the midst of family crisis. It presents developmental theories with which professionals might better assess the developmental needs, synchronies, and trajectories of a given child. Ultimately, this book presents guidelines for making appropriate legal decisions and recommendations for children who have experienced crises such as abuse, neglect, relocation, divorce, and much more. Key topics include: Custodial schedules Foster and adoptive care Post-divorce disputes Termination of parental rights Psychological assessment and diagnosis Incarcerated parents and visitation rights Relocation and "distance parenting" Visitation resistance and refusal/reunification Parental Alienation/alignment and estrangement Theories of cognitive, language, and social development
This book places the major theories of development in historical and contemporary context, and provides frameworks for understanding and perceiving the significance of the research findings in developmental psychology.
A classic in the field, this third edition will continue to be the book of choice for advanced undergraduate and graduate-level courses in theories of human development in departments of psychology and human development. This volume has been substantially revised with an eye toward supporting applied developmental science and the developmental systems perspectives. Since the publication of the second edition, developmental systems theories have taken center stage in contemporary developmental science and have provided compelling alternatives to reductionist theoretical accounts having either a nature or nurture emphasis. As a consequence, a developmental systems orientation frames the presentation in this edition. This new edition has been expanded substantially in comparison to the second edition. Special features include: * A separate chapter focuses on the historical roots of concepts and theories of human development, on philosophical models of development, and on developmental contextualism. * Two new chapters surrounding the discussion of developmental contextualism--one on developmental systems theories wherein several exemplars of such models are discussed and a corresponding chapter wherein key instances of such theories--life span, life course, bioecological, and action theoretical ones--are presented. * A new chapter on cognition and development is included, contrasting systems' approaches to cognitive development with neo-nativist perspectives. * A more differentiated treatment of nature-oriented theories of development is provided. There are separate chapters on behavior genetics, the controversy surrounding the study of the heritability of intelligence, work on the instinctual theory of Konrad Lorenz, and a new chapter on sociobiology. * A new chapter concentrates on applied developmental science.
